I don't see anything wrong with the email. Meditation does provide genuine medical physiological benefits, if you disregard all the new age philosphical BS surrounding it. It's just that they chose to name the session "Balancing of Chakras". Why does the name matter?

Because meditation relaxes you and provides its benefits regardless of how balanced your chakra is and how tuned in you are to your inner spirit. As an educational institution, a university should emphasize the former and not the latter.

To me the worst is how all this stuff is creeping into the mainstream media. Has anyone seen The Secret? :yuck: I almost puked during that movie.

Staff: Mentor

Meditation does provide genuine medical physiological benefits, if you disregard all the new age philosphical BS surrounding it.

Post a link to scientific studies showing that this is consistantly medically proven. Maybe sometimes, depending on how suggestive the person is. But that is the key, how suggestive the person is. I had the top clinical hypnotist in the US, a well known psychologist, try to hypnotize me. Told me he had never been unable to put anyone under. I was his first failure.

Meditation wouldn't work for me. My mind is too active to artificially shut it down. You have to want and believe and be very suggestive for meditation to work, so it's not something that actually works for anyone that tries it.

It's just a name, I really don't see anything wrong with it. On the other hand, if they start handing out or selling New Age DVDs, books during the meditation session then of course that's objectionable. For the record, I don't know what chakras are, but I do agree to a certain extent that they could have written it as "Balancing the Chakras" with quotation marks if they wanted it to be nothing more than just a meditation session.

It's just a name, I really don't see anything wrong with it. On the other hand, if they start handing out or selling New Age DVDs, books during the meditation session then of course that's objectionable. For the record, I don't know what chakras are, but I do agree to a certain extent that they could have written it as "Balancing the Chakras" with quotation marks if they wanted it to be nothing more than just a meditation session.

Yes, its just a name. Until some non-science based students take it, think they feel better and start buying into that 'sh!tcra' nonsense. Woops, did I spell it wrong.

You SHOULD see something wrong with a university promoting what amounts to a pile of crap. Its a slap in the face to the biology deparment.

Staff: Mentor

Meditation does provide genuine medical physiological benefits, if you disregard all the new age philosphical BS surrounding it. It's just that they chose to name the session "Balancing of Chakras". Why does the name matter?

So it is ok because it is only half crap? Why not actually just have a class on meditation?

Teacher: What you are going to learn today is half crap.
Student: [raises hand] Could you cover all the crap in the morning session so I can skip it and come back for the afternoon session?
Teacher: Sorry, no - you won't have any way of knowing which part is the crap, and I'm not going to tell you.

Volunteers trained in a Chinese meditation technique for just five days produced lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol when asked to perform difficult mental arithmetic

NEED to chill out and pay attention too? Just five days of training in a Chinese meditation technique can help.

Previous studies have suggested that various forms of meditation can improve attention and reduce stress, but there have been few randomised controlled trials – the best way of testing a treatment's effectiveness.

So a team led by Yi-Yuan Tang of the Dalian University of Technology in north-east China teamed up with psychologist Michael Posner of the University of Oregon, Eugene, to put a meditative technique called integrated body-mind training (IBMT) to a controlled test. The team randomly assigned 80 students to 20 minutes per day of tuition, either in how to relax the body's muscle groups or in IBMT.

After five days, those trained in IBMT scored better on tests of attention and mood. They also produced lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol when asked to perform some difficult mental arithmetic (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0707678104).

Other researchers are intrigued, but say it is unclear whether these positive effects are transient. Another question is whether longer periods of training would produce bigger or more profound cognitive changes. “The real goodies come with long-term practice,” suggests Roger Walsh, a psychiatrist who studies meditation at the University of California, Irvine.

Behaviour Research and Therapy Volume 45 said:

Randomized trial of a meditation-based stress reduction program and cognitive behavior therapy in generalized social anxiety disorder

Abstract:
Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) has been reported to reduce anxiety in a broad range of clinical populations. However, its efficacy in alleviating core symptoms of specific anxiety disorders is not well established. We conducted a randomized trial to evaluate how well MBSR compared to a first-line psychological intervention for social anxiety disorder (SAD). Fifty-three patients with DSM-IV generalized SAD were randomized to an 8-week course of MBSR or 12 weekly sessions of cognitive–behavioral group therapy (CBGT). Although patients in both treatment groups improved, patients receiving CBGT had significantly lower scores on clinician- and patient-rated measures of social anxiety. Response and remission rates were also significantly greater with CBGT. Both interventions were comparable in improving mood, functionality and quality of life. The results confirm that CBGT is the treatment of choice of generalized SAD and suggest that MBSR may have some benefit in the treatment of generalized SAD.

Author Summary: Meditation includes the mental training of attention, which involves the selection of goal-relevant information from the array of inputs that bombard our sensory systems. One of the major limitations of the attentional system concerns the ability to process two temporally close, task-relevant stimuli. When the second of two target stimuli is presented within a half second of the first one in a rapid sequence of events, it is often not detected. This so-called “attentional-blink” deficit is thought to result from competition between stimuli for limited attentional resources. We measured the effects of intense meditation on performance and scalp-recorded brain potentials in an attentional-blink task. We found that three months of intensive meditation reduced brain-resource allocation to the first target, enabling practitioners to more often detect the second target with no compromise in their ability to detect the first target. These findings demonstrate that meditative training can improve performance on a novel task that requires the trained attentional abilities.

There isn't an abstract for this article, probably because it's rather short, and I can't post it here for fear of copyright violation. If you have access you might want to check this out.

Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice Volume 78 said:

Effects of yoga and meditation on clinical and biochemical parameters of metabolic syndrome

Journal of Psychosomatic Research Volume 62 said:

A pilot randomized control trial investigating the effect of mindfulness practice on pain tolerance, psychological well-being, and physiological activity

Abstract
Objective
To investigate the effect of mindfulness training on pain tolerance, psychological well-being, physiological activity, and the acquisition of mindfulness skills.

Methods
Forty-two asymptomatic University students participated in a randomized, single-blind, active control pilot study. Participants in the experimental condition were offered six (1-h) mindfulness sessions; control participants were offered two (1-h) Guided Visual Imagery sessions. Both groups were provided with practice CDs and encouraged to practice daily. Pre–post pain tolerance (cold pressor test), mood, blood pressure, pulse, and mindfulness skills were obtained.

Results
Pain tolerance significantly increased in the mindfulness condition only. There was a strong trend indicating that mindfulness skills increased in the mindfulness condition, but this was not related to improved pain tolerance. Diastolic blood pressure significantly decreased in both conditions.

Conclusion
Mindfulness training did increase pain tolerance, but this was not related to the acquisition of mindfulness skills.

Yes, its just a name. Until some non-science based students take it, think they feel better and start buying into that 'sh!tcra' nonsense. Woops, did I spell it wrong.

You SHOULD see something wrong with a university promoting what amounts to a pile of crap. Its a slap in the face to the biology deparment.

I don't have any idea how the session would be conducted and whether it's largely going to be meditation alone or with plenty of New Age philosophical garbage thrown in. I doubt you know this either, unless you've actually been to or have heard from those who have been to similar meditation sessions organised by health centre.

I myself have been to a couple of Buddhist meditation sessions, and while I don't believe in their philosophy and religion, I find meditation itself to be rather calming. Maybe it's psychological, but it does work for me.

So it is ok because it is only half crap? Why not actually just have a class on meditation?

I would agree that it'll be better if they left out the New Age stuff. But then again anyone who finds it nonsensical can simply ignore the New Age crap and focus on the meditative practice. I did this when I attended a couple of Buddhist meditative sessions.

There isn't an abstract for this article, probably because it's rather short, and I can't post it here for fear of copyright violation. If you have access you might want to check this out.

I don't have any idea how the session would be conducted and whether it's largely going to be meditation alone or with plenty of New Age philosophical garbage thrown in. I doubt you know this either, unless you've actually been to or have heard from those who have been to similar meditation sessions organised by health centre.

I myself have been to a couple of Buddhist meditation sessions, and while I don't believe in their philosophy and religion, I find meditation itself to be rather calming. Maybe it's psychological, but it does work for me.

I would agree that it'll be better if they left out the New Age stuff. But then again anyone who finds it nonsensical can simply ignore the New Age crap and focus on the meditative practice. I did this when I attended a couple of Buddhist meditative sessions.

Sadly, you missed the point of this thread entirely. Im not talking about meditation, nor am I complaining about meditation.

Sadly, you missed the point of this thread entirely. Im not talking about meditation, nor am I complaining about meditation.

Cyrus, that part of my reply was not addressed to you. It was in response to Evo, which I quoted in my post. Anyway, I can't vouch for the veracity of these studies, since this isn't my field. It's just something I could dig up with ScienceDirect.

Cyrus, that part of my reply was not addressed to you. It was in response to Evo, which I quoted in my post. Anyway, I can't vouch for the veracity of these studies, since this isn't my field. It's just something I could dig up with ScienceDirect.